What strategies can you implement to assist children in developing trusting relationships with educators and other adults?

Next to the bond between a parent and child, the bond between a teacher and child is one of the most important for a child’s development. Children with positive outlooks on life and learning are more likely to be successful. Here are four tips to help you actively work to build this bond in your classroom.

Table of Contents Show

Be Considerate of the Child
Provide Clear Expectations and Give Choices when Appropriate
Take Time to Connect with Each Child
Speak to Each Child on His or Her Level
Allow for Unstructured, Uninterrupted Time With Your Child Each Day
Let Your Child Know You're Interested in His Activities
Encourage Children to Express Their Feelings in Age-Appropriate Ways
Respect Your Child's Feelings
Play Games that Explore Feelings
Provide Opportunities for Your Child to Develop Relationships With Peers
Limit TV and Other "Screen Time"
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Be Considerate of the Child

One of the most important things a teacher can do is show a child that you care. This involves being genuine in interactions, actively listening, and responding to the needs of the child. If a child is upset or frustrated, it is your responsibility to help him or her determine what the cause is, and provide strategies, if needed, to work through the situation.

Listen, reflect on, and validate a child’s emotions to show him or her that their feelings are important to you and his or her well-being.

Provide Clear Expectations and Give Choices when Appropriate

Take time to let the children know what the expectations are in your classroom. Older children may be able to provide ideas for setting expectations. Clear expectations allow children to follow through on directions and make wise decisions.

When appropriate allow children to make choices, this provides them a sense of control over the situation and builds self-confidence by allowing them to feel that you trust their decisions.

Take Time to Connect with Each Child

Take time every day to connect with each child individually. Greeting a child warmly and talking in a pleasant, calm voice helps you develop a secure teacher, child relationships. It is also important to get to know each child and appreciate where he or she is at in their development, understanding, and interests. This will allow you to better tap into how to reach and motivate each individual child.

Speak to Each Child on His or Her Level

When speaking to a child, kneel or lean down to get on his or her level. Eye contact is also incredibly important. Whether you’re communicating directions or asking the child a question, this body language demonstrates that you are engaged and listening.

A positive teacher-child relationship has a tremendous impact on a young child’s ability to learn and grow. Take the time to foster trusting relationships, and you’ll find that it’s much easier to manage your classroom and create a positive learning environment.

Home / Educators / Professional Development (3 - 5 YEARS) / Getting Families Involved

instructional coherence: the experience learners have when messages that come from different sources (families and educators, for example) are the same or build on each other
cognitive development: the process of knowing, thinking, reasoning, and remembering
language development: the process of developing language skills to understand and engage in conversation
self-regulate: the ability to regulate or control one’s emotions, thoughts, and behavior
social development: the ability to use appropriate social skills to communicate and interact with others

Before watching this video, read the text below. When instructed, watch the video from the beginning to end.

A child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and academic development is strengthened when educators and families work together. When a child sees a positive relationship developing between educators and family, the child recognizes that the important people in his or her life are working together and trust each other, and he or she will do the same. This collaboration also provides a strong foundation for communication about children’s learning. To foster family involvement, interactions between educators and families should be positive, purposeful, reciprocal, and consistent.

Communicate with families often. When there is good communication between educators and families, learning is collaborative, accomplishments are acknowledged, problems are recognized, and solutions are provided.
Communicate the positive and the negative. Families will have a better sense of their child’s behaviors and accomplishments if all behaviors are reported (not only those that are negative or challenging).
Foster two-way communication. It is as important for the educator to hear from the parent or caregiver what the child is doing at home as it is for the parent or caregiver to hear what the child is doing in the early learning program. Share what children are learning and how parents and caregivers can offer support. Ask for feedback from families about the child’s academic and social development outside of the program.
Use multiple modes communication. Create a constant flow of communication. Engage with families in person at drop-off and pick-up, keep a journal for each child that families can read and contribute to, set up a Parent Information Board, write regular newsletters or blog posts, and send emails or text messages.
Understand each family’s expectations and views about their involvement. What parents and caregivers view as family engagement may differ from family to family. For example, in some cultures families believe that the most respectful way to treat an educator is not to question, suggest, or share information. Be explicit about the kind of involvement that you expect and welcome from families, but also honor the limits families may want to maintain.
Approach the relationship with respect. Treat the educator and family relationship the way you would treat any important relationship in your life. Work to create a respectful and reciprocal relationship—one in which families feel valued and supported.

In this video, you’ll see educators use various strategies to build strong relationships with families. As you watch, look for effective strategies used by the educators in the video and jot down answers to these viewing questions in your Learning Log.

How do the educators keep families informed of their child’s learning and activities?
How do the educators engage with families?

Review

Why is it important for you to build relationships with families?

Families and educators each have unique knowledge about a child.
- A parent or caregiver can share information with educators about how the child feels, thinks, and learns outside of the formal learning environment.
- An educator can offer insight about how the child learns and behaves in group situations, as well as on his or her own.
Strong relationships between educators and families can strengthen children’s emotional health. They show children that they can trust the adults in their lives because those adults trust each other.
Children’s academic growth benefits from instructional coherence (when the learning in the program is supported by the learning at home and vice-versa).
Respectful relationships between educators and families provide children with models for how to create positive relationships with others.

What are some helpful ways to share information about what children are doing and learning?

Set up a Parent Information Board in the drop-off and pick-up area to post learning objectives, key vocabulary words, and explicit examples of ways parents can reinforce the learning. For example, Today we read a book about scientists. We learned how scientists look, touch, smell, listen to, and learn about the world around them. On your way home, ask your child to look, touch, smell, and listen as he or she practices being a scientist.
Use blogs, newsletters, text messages, and social media pages to keep families up-to-date on learning, provide ideas on home connections, share photos, and encourage families to share home experiences with educators.
Keep a journal for each child. Educators can write weekly entries about each child, highlighting a new project, a new learning, a new challenge, or a new development. Family members can read and contribute to the journal.

Reflect

Think about the learning environment at your own program as you answer these reflection questions in your Learning Log.

How do you build positive and collaborative relationships with families?
What did you learn that you will put into practice in your own learning environment?

Relationship-building describes the process of establishing emotional connections with others, starting from birth, which are based on trust and intimacy. Through relationships, children discover who they are and learn to understand others. When young children experience people helping, understanding, and enjoying them, they approach the world with openness and enthusiasm, and they grow to be responsive and caring people.

Babies are born with a drive to relate to and connect with others, and they continue to develop the social skills necessary to form strong, healthy relationships throughout their lives:

A newborn gazes at her mother’s face as she breastfeeds. She recognizes her mother as the special, loving person who is always there for her, and calms down almost immediately when her mother picks her up and holds her close. This baby is learning that she is loved and that she can trust others to care for her and treat her well.
A 6-month-old laughs and laughs as his father holds a napkin over his face, and then drops it to say, “Peek-a-boo!” Whenever his father tries to put the napkin back on the table, the baby says, “eh, eh, eh” to let his father know he wants him will hold up that silly napkin again. This baby is learning that he can connect with a loved one through a fun activity like this one. He is discovering that spending time together is satisfying and pleasurable.
A 20-month-old wants to cut his own fruit for snack. His grandmother says no. He stamps his feet and sobs. His grandmother tells him she has an idea: She gives him a dull butter knife and guides his hand to help him cut some melon. This toddler is learning that his interests and needs are important and what it feels like to be understood by another person.
A 2 ½-year-old sees her brother fall off his bicycle and begin crying. She runs over and starts to rub his back, like she’s seen her mommy do. This toddler is learning how to empathize with, or understand, another’s feelings and experiences.

Below are some ideas for nurturing relationship-building skills in infants and toddlers.

Allow for Unstructured, Uninterrupted Time With Your Child Each Day

Let her be the leader in deciding what to play. Don’t multi-task during this special playtime—just be there with your child one-on-one. She will feel loved and special with your full attention. When you have to do turn to daily chores, you can stay connected with your toddler by talking with her or having her help with the activity, giving her “jobs” she can handle. With your baby, you can narrate what you’re doing and offer her interesting, related objects to keep her connected to you—like giving her a wooden spoon to play with while you’re cooking.

Let Your Child Know You're Interested in His Activities

Show a sincere interest in your child—whatever he is doing. Your attention is what he desires and is thrilled to receive. You can show your interest by commenting on or describing what he is doing: “You are using so many beautiful colors to make that drawing.” Or, get involved by following his lead. If he is putting blocks in a container, see if he’ll take turns with you, or if you can build something together. This will also help him learn about the value and joy of back and forth play which is an important aspect of all successful relationships.

Encourage Children to Express Their Feelings in Age-Appropriate Ways

Forming positive, healthy relationships depends on the ability to show feelings appropriately and to recognize the feelings of others. Teach children acceptable ways to vent anger, like drawing an angry picture, running in the yard, or tossing a pillow on the floor. Label your own feelings, “I am happy because you helped me clean up,” or, “I am sad that Grandma had to fly home.” It is important for children to know that you have feelings too, but that there are ways to cope with them so you can feel better.

Respect Your Child's Feelings

This teaches your child to trust her instincts. It can also help her work through powerful or difficult feelings and allow her to move on. Knowing you respect her feelings teaches your child empathy and respect for others, which are important elements in any relationship. Accepting her feelings, without minimizing them or making fun, also increases the chances that she will share more with you as she grows.

Play Games that Explore Feelings

Use puppets to act out a young child’s typical frustrations or fears, like having to share toys with a playmate, adjusting to a new baby, or separating from loved ones. Make drawings or hats for different emotions, and talk about pictures in books that communicate feelings. Also, watch what your child “tells” you during his play—it can be a window into his inner thoughts and feelings. For example, if your child dresses up in mommy clothes and acts out leaving her teddy bear at the babysitter’s house, she may be wondering about separations. You can help her think through these big ideas and feelings by playing along and perhaps reminding her that, while Teddy misses his mama, he knows his mama always comes back.

Provide Opportunities for Your Child to Develop Relationships With Peers

Children need practice in order to learn to share, take turns, resolve conflict, and feel the joy of friendship. Playing together gives children all of this—plus a chance for parents to connect with others adults, too! At this age, being present during play-dates is important as children often need help learning and practicing their new friendship skills. And it’s a good rule of thumb to keep playdates short for little ones—45 minutes-to-an-hour is about right for most toddlers. For older toddlers, you can use their playtime with peers to nurture relationship-building skills by:

Suggesting, when appropriate, that children turn to peers for assistance or to get answers to their questions: “You are wondering how to get the little doll to sit in the high chair? Why don’t you ask Jeremy? I just saw him feeding her a few minutes ago.”
Asking children to imagine how their behavior might affect others: “I see that you told Greta that she can’t play ball with you. How do you think that made her feel?”
Encouraging children to work in groups or as teams, when appropriate: “Sam and DeShawn, could you please put the cars away? Then you can help me get your snack ready.”
Helping children to see others’ points of view, which encourages empathy: “Casey is feeling sad because his mom had to go.”

Limit TV and Other "Screen Time"

Television takes time away from hanging out together—and time away from children playing, solving problems, interacting, and actively learning about the world around them. When your child does watch, you can enhance the experience by talking with your child about the show—what she thought it was about, which characters she liked and disliked, how it made her feel. You can also act out the story as she understood it, use puppets to tell the story, or make up your own story together.